Now Comes ... Garth! Anytime I see a big muscly blond bloke I think of Garth, especially if he's drawn in that 'British' style, as here.

Like you with WITW I used to use the local landscape as a reference when I was reading a book. I was lucky that beyond my house there was only woods, braes, burns and rivers (with waterfalls) practically all the way down to Ayrshire (with a few small towns thrown in for variety). When I read Kidnapped at a very young age, I hadn't yet visited the original Highland locations, so I used the local features to fill in the details. Same with other stories that had similar settings. Me and my mates used to imagine our local quarry as part of the James Bond stories, with the daily explosions and the complicated conveyor belt systems that carried all the different rocks similar to Dr No's guano operation.

Likewise, your comment on the importance of where and when you first read a particular comic strip: the first American Marvel comic I ever held in my hand was purchased on holiday in Fort William when I was nine years old. It was The Amazing Spiderman #84 in 1970, with a Romita cover of Spidey and The Kingpin. It was one of the few sunny days on that holiday and we went for a picnic on the shores of Loch Eil, looking directly at the famous view of Ben Nevis, and that's where I read my first Marvel comic. I was so inspired that I spent the rest of the afternoon jumping up and down on all the rocks on the shores of the loch, posing like Spidey.

Whenever I went out to play after seeing just about any Western movie on TV, the field across the road from my house seemed as large as any sprawling plains I'd seen on the telly. Likewise, Ben Lomond in the distance was, to me, the Lonely Mountain I'd read about in The Hobbit. Making such connections wasn't something I consciously tried to do - the associations were automatic and seemed quite natural.

The view from our (ahem, how posh!) veranda was also of Ben Lomond faraway in the distance; although we were a bit further west than you, Kid, I imagine it was pretty similar. I didn't read Tolkien until much later, so I didn't - or couldn't - make that connection. For me, 'The Ben' was an indication that beyond that point the Highlands were waiting.

STUDIO 77

About the artist:

From 1985 to 2000 A.D. (little joke there), I contributed to a variety of high profile comics and magazines for various companies.

For IPC/FLEETWAY/EGMONT, I freelanced as a lettering and logo artiston various weekly comics and monthly magazines, and also as a resize comic artistandspot illustratoron pocket books, summer specials and annuals.

ForMARVEL U.K., BLACK LIBRARY, REDAN and USBORNE BOOKS, I again freelanced as a lettering artist, also working as arestoration artistfor MARVEL U.S., restoring and re-creating certain pages of JACK KIRBY art for their MARVEL MASTERWORKS editions.

I also lettered the MARVELMAN sample pages submitted to MARVEL U.S. when they were considering acquiring the character, which - as we all now know - they DID.

Supplied comic strips, cartoons and illustrated advertisements for local business campaigns and newspaper publication on a professional basis since the age of 16. Did my first paid art job for publication at 14 or 15 for Lanarkshire Education Board.

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